Three Cheers for the Death of Broadcast TV, Part 2: The FNL Factor

Tuned In stalwart Chaddogg alerts me to what could be a great bit of news: EW's Michael Ausiello reports that NBC and DirecTV are nearing a deal to keep Friday Night Lights on the air for two, count 'em two, more seasons. This would be service enough in the valiant field of Coming Up With Your TV Blogger's Topics for Him, but Chaddogg further volunteers:

[C]ould this be a sign of the path forward for critically beloved cult shows, with RABID fan bases but inexplicably lacking in mainstream large ratings? Could NBC and DirecTV have found a plan to save these shows -- allowing all of us to see them on network during less-ratings competitive times (summer, Fridays, Saturdays), but giving the satellites a chance to build their own product and some demand for their exclusive first airings, and making it economical for both since they are sharing costs?

Why yes, Chad, yes, they could. What's more, I think this is another side benefit of the "death" of network TV that we've been hearing so bemoaned lately, and which I argued is largely a good thing. (I'll be writing more on this in TIME in the next few weeks.)

DirecTV, after all, is just one of the myriad competitors who are atomizing the formerly huge broadcast audience. But it's because of outlets like it that shows with small but intense fanbases might just be able to survive. One of many things that cable and satellite allow is for you to monetize depth, nor just breadth, of interest: in other words, they can find a way to make money off a relative few who really want to watch FNL, whereas under the old broadcast model, you can only make money off having millions of viewers who like it just enough not to change the channel.

But aren't all these other outlets wiping out the audience for broadcast shows like FNL? Maybe, maybe not. That is, certainly all broadcast shows, even the failures, had bigger audiences ten or twenty years ago. (Freaks and Geeks, for instance, was canceled with an audience of 10 or 11 million, which would amount to a respectable hit nowadays.) And while the rise of cable has cut into the network business model--resulting in things like the hand-over of the 10 p.m. timeslot to Jay Leno--it has also created a place for more cable-like shows like FNL, simply because the network audience is more cable-like.

A decade ago, I bet you, FNL would not have lasted more than a season, if it were picked up as a network series at all. Conversely, I sometimes torture myself wondering what would have happened had Freaks and Geeks debuted seven or eight years later—it could have hung on for three seasons, like FNL or Arrested Development.

None of this is to deny that the state of the networks has hurt programming in some ways: I'm not dying to see the Jay Hour, and we may be looking at a fall when nervous broadcasters give us a dozen Mentalists. It may be harder than ever for broadcasters to make expensive, epic shows, which will probably be left to the HBOs of the world.

But the rise of many more little TV outlets means that many more opportunities for little shows like FNL to find a place. If that allows the Dillon Panthers to go into overtime, I'm fine with that.